Saturday 16 October 2010 19.10 EDT
First published on Saturday 16 October 2010 19.10 EDT

There are three Italian managers in the Premier League and they are all doing better than expected. To be more precise, they are all doing better than this column expected. Italian football is so different to the game we play in England it seemed reasonable to assume newcomers from a Serie A background would need a season or two to get over the culture shock, so it was quite easy to predict that Carlo Ancelotti would struggle to hit the ground running at Chelsea or that Roberto Mancini was completely the wrong choice to control clashing egos at Manchester City.

Quite easy, just utterly wide of the mark. Ancelotti won the double in his first season in the country, a stupendous achievement no matter how gifted and well-drilled the squad he inherited. Mancini has not won anything yet but his team spent the international break above Manchester United in the table, partly as a consequence of beating Ancelotti's Chelsea. Roberto Di Matteo does not really fit into the same pattern, having spent a lot of time in this country since arriving as a player, but even if taking over West Brom does not come with quite the pressure for instant success currently associated with Chelsea and City, he seems to be making a good job of it.

Ancelotti, perhaps because he has so little to prove as a manager, appears the most relaxed and comfortable of the trio. He certainly has a relaxed attitude, as anyone who has dipped into his book will confirm, though Mancini is running him surprisingly close. The manager pushed rather hastily into the void left by Mark Hughes last December has lost his careworn, slightly hunted look, possibly because Craig Bellamy has been banished from the realm, and is now showing every sign of not only being on top of the challenge at City, but enjoying it. His English is excellent and his sense of humour just as engaging as Ancelotti's, as can be seen from the way he delivered an otherwise serious sermon on the dangers of drink in the wake of Joe Hart's escapades in a Spanish bar.

"I know it is part of the English culture to drink after a game, when I first went to Leicester we went straight to the pub after training and drank I don't know how many beers," he said. "But I do not understand players drinking until they are drunk. We do not have that culture in Italy. We would prefer to go off with a woman. That's what I liked to do after a match, and I tell my players now it is better that they go with a woman than drink. Much better."

Such advice may strike Wayne Rooney as ironic, though Mancini knows medical science will back him up when he says players can shorten their careers by drinking to excess. "When you are young you feel you can do what you like, and maybe in your early 20s you can recover easily," he said. "But when you are 28 or 29 you begin to pay the price. If you look after yourself you can have a much longer career, maybe many more years at the top. I don't know if you remember Pietro Vierchowod, but he played until he was 40 for me, at 100%. Javier Zanetti is 37 but still the best player at Inter, because he has always been dedicated he is still in a good period."

It seems safe to say Mancini is adapting to life in England just fine, except he possibly fails to understand that the culture among young, affluent males in this country is to do everything to excess. Footballers especially have been known to stack up women, cars and jewellery, as well as drinks, sometimes all at the same time. Italians, with their elegant minimalism, may never be able to get their heads around that. It is probably an Anglo-Saxon thing, or something to do with the climate. But then Graeme Souness used to say that most of the Italian players he knew smoked, even though they were aware it was a far worse habit than the occasional drink. They did it because they thought it made them look cool. The worst thing of all, he added, was that they were right.

England shocker is no longer a surprise

England had another of their humbling moments at Wembley on Tuesday, shocking the nation with their inability to even look like beating a fledgling football country with a population of just 670,000.

Yet do we still have a right to be surprised? Surely anyone paying attention to the last couple of World Cups would be aware that the days are long gone when England could push over minor nations just by breathing on them. And though small, Montenegro is no San Marino. It used to form a part of Yugoslavia, a country with a longer history of European Championship involvement than England, and one which, unlike England, made it to a couple of finals. Even since the break-up of the Federal Republic, bits of old Yugoslavia have been bothering England. Macedonia drew 2-2 with Sven-Goran Eriksson's team at Southampton in 2002, and four years later held Steve McClaren's side to a scoreless draw at Old Trafford, before Croatia put the tin lid on the last English manager's regime with home and away victories.

Performances before and since Fabio Capello's arrival have been so dire that England players have had humility forced upon them. It has been a while since anyone dared mention a golden generation, world-class players or Jules Rimet still gleaming. England know their place, and it is not that far above Scotland. So why Alan Hansen was so confident Montenegro would be put to the sword he recommended resting the captain is a mystery. "It is really a nothing game for England, so why risk Rio Ferdinand in a game in which he does not need to play?" the Match of the Day pundit asked.

As it turned out it was a nothing-nothing game, and Capello needed not only Ferdinand but the width of Joe Hart's crossbar. There's not much chance of England keeping a sense of perspective if even a Scot cannot manage it.